ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, February 3, 1997 TAG: 9702030093
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: LETTERS
Homeowners are the ones who need relief
I LONG have advocated an increased sales tax in lieu of personal-property and real-estate taxes.
However, eliminating the personal-property tax and holding on to the real-estate tax dictates that one way or another the increased burden will fall on homeowners - just as any effort to cut, overhaul or equalize taxes at the federal level inevitably falls on the middle class. And unfunded federal mandates eventually make their way, brutally, onto the backs of that same hapless homeowners.
This is a bitter pill to the individual who solely depends on Social Security, which now heads the list of endangered species.
I urge all of those who own real estate to give this situation careful thought and then make their wishes known. There are more personal-property owners than landowners.
And we should not lose sight of the fact that the twice-defeated federal tax proposal to lower the estate exemption to $200,000 is waiting in the wings. It is nothing more, nor less, than land reform by way of taxation.
Anyway you cut it, a sales tax distributes the responsibility more evenly, and the personal-property tax is fairer than a real-estate tax. And the latter is the greatest fixed cost to many retirees.
RAYMOND L. WILKERSON
EVINGTON
Clinton deserves the benefit of doubt
REGARDING Marshall R. Tackett's Jan. 20 letter to the editor, ``What if Jones were your daughter?'':
I hope some holier-than-thou people would not be so ready to prosecute someone before they are tried and sentenced. Tackett stated that Paula Jones is someone's daughter. I would remind him that President Clinton is someone's son.
``He that is without sin, let him cast the first stone.''
EDSEL T. DUNCAN
WILLIS
Delegates showed pro-abortion zeal
DELEGATES Ward Armstrong, Richard Cranwell, Barnie Day, Creigh Deeds, Tom Jackson, Jim Shuler and Chip Woodrum voted against Sen. Mark Earley's bill to make the murder of a pre-born child a crime. These delegates want no criminal penalty for killing the preborn child when someone hits, stabs or shoots a pregnant woman, causing her child to die.
This is shocking. Unfortunately, it's very understandable, too. It's hard to believe anyone would have so callused an attitude toward preborn children, but it's understandable when we realize the immorality of pro-abortion extremists.
These delegates know Earley's bill would provide a common-sense protection for preborn children. But they are pro-abortion extremists who refuse to admit in law that the preborn child is a child, because admitting this would prove abortion is the murder of children. Protecting abortion is more important to these pro-abortion delegates than protecting preborn children.
Everyone who helped elect Armstrong, Cranwell, Day, Deeds, Jackson, Shuler or Woodrum voted to protect abortion and to endanger preborn children. All of us should remember this when we vote in our state elections this fall.
ERNESTINE B. FRITH
RADFORD
Give parents a helping hand
IN YOUR Jan. 22 editorial (``Enlist schools in war on crime?''), you made a strong and effective case for enrolling schools in the important and significant programs of guiding children.
There is a pre-eminent step surpassing all others. It is the role parents must, and do, have in guiding and leading children. In reality, parents are the prime and most direct way to a child's heart and mind.
I believe the most effective and efficient way to give children a helping hand is to reach the parents, and enroll them in a course on parental guidance and child psychology.
JOE LIPTON
ROANOKE
City still waits for flood control
HAS ROANOKE city forgotten the flood of 1985? What is the delay?
Buena Vista has already constructed its flood wall to prevent future flooding. Our section of Roanoke remains under the same threat as in 1985. No dredging or walls.
The few sprouts at the Franklin Road bridge have now grown to an acre-size island. I feel that the city has enough proper equipment to clean out the hindrance to the flow of water.
The Norfolk Southern trestle abutments near Jefferson Street need to be widened so that the river, during flood stages, would not be backed into Victory Stadium.
Where is the Army Corps of Engineers? Isn't it past time to get something done?
JAMES E. ROBERTSON
ROANOKE
LENGTH: Medium: 96 linesby CNB